Erick Erickson, the well-connected political activist at RedState.com, echoed Hannity.

“Keep pressuring Republicans. They must hold this line. They must not cave,” he wrote in a blog post blasting weak-kneed Republicans who are willing to give in to Democratic demands to reopen the government with no strings attached.

“Hold this line.”

Outside Washington some conservatives have also picked up the refrain. Steve Lonegan, a U.S. Senate candidate in New Jersey, lauded House Republicans for “having the guts to hold the line.”

Perhaps the more pertinent question is, who are the Romans and who are the barbarians in the latest Washington drama?

In the Democratic telling, tea-party conservatives are the barbarians crashing the gates of D.C. to disrupt the normal order of things. They are the ones, to use the words of Crowe’s character, who “unleash hell.”

Yet tea-party conservatives would probably view themselves more like the Crowe character later in the movie, fighting to bring back virtue in a capitol racked by corruption and financial malfeasance.